Route 460 expansion halted amid permitting concerns

Ryan Murphy, rmurphy@dailypress.com

The state will halt spending on the Route 460 expansion project until the Army Corps of Engineers gives its final OK, according to the state's top transportation official, and much to the disappointment of local officials.

Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne told the Commonwealth Transportation Board Wednesday that he since Route 460 is having issues with the permit process, he has asked the Virginia Department of Transportation not to spend any additional money on construction or right of way until the permits are secured.

The Corps is still studying the potential environmental impact of the project to ensure wetlands along the corridor won't be damaged as a result of construction.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe was asked after he spoke to the Commonwealth Transportation board what the state was going to do about 460.

"We don't know that today," he said. "The secretary and I are in agreement. We love conceptually the idea that it opens up the port (and) gives us another escape route in the event of some natural disaster, a hurricane or something. So conceptually I understand the importance of it."

However, the new governor isn't up for spending on a project that hasn't received the necessary stamps of approval.

"The secretary and I have been very concerned that we have spent millions of dollars on a project that doesn't have all of its final permitting done," McAuliffe said. "We don't know what would happen if they didn't get that permit (from the Corps of Engineers)."

The plan entails the construction of 55 miles of new highway between Prince George County and Suffolk, according to the website of U.S. 460 Mobility Partners, the group chosen by the state to build the project. The proposed four-lane divided, limited-access highway would follow the path of the current 460 and would be buildt south of the existing road.

Local officials were dismayed by the decision.

The current Route 460 cuts through the heart of the town of Windsor in Isle of Wight County, dividing the northern and southern halves of the town with a seemingly endless procession of tractor-trailers. The truck traffic can sometimes make it difficult to enter or cross the narrow, busy highway and has been known to cause traffic fatalities in the town.

Windsor Mayor Carita Richardson said safety is her driving concern behind the new 460 project.

"(460) was a parking lot and backed up to Chesapeake for three days" when an evacuation of the Sandbridge area in Virginia Beach and asmall part of the Outer Banks was ordered a few years ago, Richardson said. She warned that a full-scale evacuation could result in far worse.

Lawmakers also stressed safety issues at a meeting with local officials on Jan. 3. State Sens. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, agreed that improvements to 460 are a priority for them while in Richmond.

"If we do not improve our evacuation capability, people are going to die," Cosgrove said then. "In a serious event, like Hurricane Sandy, there will be people face down in the water and we'll be picking up bodies for weeks."

Richardson advocated a holistic view of the traffic issue in Hampton Roads, instead of favoring one project over another.

"I am in favor of doing all of this, in order to take care of congestion – you need to do the new 460, adding extra lanes on 64, the third crossing, all of this can be done, but when you start the infighting about what gets funded it doesn't solve the problem," she said. "If you're going to kill this project with wetlands, what's going to happen on 64 when you start adding lanes?"

Dee Dee Darden, a member of Isle of Wight's Board of Supervisors representing the Windsor District, said the suspension was a blow to the whole region.

"I think we're all very disappointed. We're counting on 460 for a lot of reasons — safety, economic development, creating jobs through building 460," Darden said.

The project is a major piece of Isle of Wight's economic development efforts, especially in the buildout of the Shirley T. Holland Intermodal Park, which local officials had hoped would handle burgeoning shipping traffic from the Port of Virginia in the future.

Darden said the board expected to hear an update on the project at its meeting scheduled for Thursday evening and had previously hoped to send a delegation to meet with Layne about 460.